William Myron Keck was born back in 1880. His father left home to work in the oil fields, so he started selling sandwiches and candy on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to support his mother. Later on, he found work as a roustabout with an oil company in Pennsylvania. Later he made his way to California where he worked as a speculator drilling oil wells.
He struck oil in Hunting Beach and Kettleman Hill oil fields. At the height of the oil boom in th 1920’s in Los Angeles, he was the only wildcatter to purchase a lease on 300 acres of Andrew Joughin’s farm outside of Torrance. He died in 1964, he was 84.
What you may not know about William is that in 1921 he founded the Superior Oil Company in Coalinga, California. In 1954, he founded the W.M. Keck Foundation one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. In 1990, construction was started on the summit of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano. At the time it was the largest astronomical telescope in the world. He also founded the Keck School of Medicine at USC.
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